


so what did you do, those three days you were dead?

by torches



Category: Bleach
Genre: Character of Color, F/M, five things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-25
Updated: 2009-11-25
Packaged: 2017-10-03 18:18:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torches/pseuds/torches
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five things that felt true. (Spoilers through ch. 377.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	so what did you do, those three days you were dead?

1\. _degausser_  
It feels like fucking, only backwards, the first time the mask comes off; Shinji spits and wants to vomit, but his throat's too dry and there's nothing in his chest that wants to come up and scream. His eyes swim, and he finally focuses on the face of that smartass bastard Kisuke, who looks - sad, almost, but maddeningly proud. Shinji will punch him as soon as he can stand up, which he's guessing will be sometime in the next twenty yeas at the rate his body seems to want to move.

Kisuke moves on and Shinji's eyes involuntarily follow him. The world rushes back to his brain at the sight of the others, lined up against the wall, held by black bars of kido and hanging limp. Like trophies, and the grotesque masks they wore only added to the feeling. Suddenly Shinji wanted to be anywhere but here. He couldn't handle the way this room felt like a shrine to sacrifice.

But his whole body felt numb, and he could only watch as Kisuke knelt, held the Hogyoku to each masked shape's chest in some sort of perverse ritual - everything about this was _fucked_, and here was ceremony, like they were trying to make this mockery of nature _holy_ \- and he wanted to claw at his chest to tear away a hole where his soul didn't belong anymore, but at last he'd realized he couldn't move because of the kido holding him in place and it wasn't worth struggling against something like that when he felt this drained. He watched their bodies flicker and settle into the gigai Kisuke must have made for them all during the time they'd spent shapeless and empty, submerged beneath their swallowing masks. Masks that cracked and dissolved to dust and set them all to choking and wakefulness.

"So ... now what?" His voice felt raw. He couldn't look right at Kisuke.

"Now?" Kisuke looked startled, like he hadn't considered the question. "I suppose ... we all try not to die."

Shinji stared at him, and then began to laugh, hoarsely, and he kept laughing even when it felt like a wrecking ball to his lungs, and he only stopped when the kido faded enough that Hiyori could stagger across the room and uppercut him right in the jaw.

He choked on his own spit and stared at her, eyes crossing at the closeness of her fist, and she said, "Don't waste my ears with your stupidity. Of course we're going to live."

2\. _untitled_

"I'm not beating up a granny for food."

"Yes, you are. Or else we're not eating tonight."

"She's got a _walker_! How the hell am I supposed to beat up a crippled grandma!"

"I don't have any problems hitting _you_!"

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"I don't know, you're so not-stupid, why don't _you_ figure it out?"

"I'm not beating up an old lady!"

"Yes you are!"

"No I'm not!"

"Are!"

"Not!"

"Are!"

"Not!"

"... uh, guys? She's gone."

"What?!"

"Fuuuuuck, that's one fast granny."

"AND NOW WE DON'T HAVE ANY FOOD TO EAT, YOU RETARD! I HOPE YOU STARVE TO DEATH!"

"MAYBE YOU SHOULD STOP PICKING TARGETS WORSE OFF THAN WE ARE!"

"(Maybe we should stop trying to ambush people leaving the supermarket at night, guys.)"

"**YOU STAY OUT OF THIS.**"

3\. _millstone_

It's ten years after they've lost everything they ever were before things start to feel like they've hit some sort of equilibrium between the hole left by what they used to have and the hole created by the space they have no choice but to live in. It takes them that long to find jobs, clothes, a home, and hope. Not necessarily in that order.

Her zanpakuto feels strange and heavy in her false hands. Hiyori flips it up and across her shoulders, rolling with the weight and grunting when the sheath slides into her waiting, outstretched palm.

Sweat is gross and makes her feel profane. She doesn't like the reminder of how far she's fallen that she can't help but perspire at the slightest exertion; it's always so fucking hot in Karakura Town, she doesn't know how real human beings stand it.

At least in the Seireitei she could _choose_.

"Shit," she mutters, and repeats the motion, this time drawing the sword from its scabbard as she flicked it from shoulder to shoulder. She had to draw without disturbing the motion of the scabbard; it wasn't something her clumsy, _real_ body knew how to do, and every wasted second was another needle in the forefront of her brain.

Years and years, Urahara had said; years and years of this, before the disconnect between flesh and fucked-up soul would finally go away.

Patience wasn't a skill Hiyori was in any hurry to develop.

Breath hisses between her teeth and she tastes saltwater on her tongue. She hates sweat. She hates life. She hates everything. _Again_, till the movements are as instinctive to her muscles as they are already deep down in her _soul_.

All the muscles of her face draw tight and hard and she swallows the scream of frustration till it becomes a yowl instead, and the direction of her slice goes wild, leaving a scar in the concrete beneath her feet.

Shinji's fingers touch her shoulder and she nearly takes his arms off at the elbow, whirling and barely seeing him through the wavering haze and he backs off, hands up and out and waving, harmless, useless, and she growls words at him she can't even remember after saying them.

And he just reaches out and grabs her wrists and _holds_.

Says, "We will be strong enough to fight everyone we have to."

Holds.

Says, "It's not over yet."

Grins.

Says, "I can't wait to see Tousen's face when we cut _him_ in half, can you?"

And he looks so fucking stupid, right then, that she has to grin back and say, "What makes you think I'll let you embarrass everyone like that, huh? I bet you're so bad you'll miss."

He laughs, his eyes squinty little lines blurring as the sweat rolls down over her vision. "I bet you can't even hit _me_, much less _Tousen_, loudmouthed little monkey that you are."

She snarls, high and excited. "I'll stab that ugly hat off your fucking head without even _trying_, jackass."

He lets her go with a shove and falls to readiness. "Prove it."

After that there's nothing to say their swords can't say for the both of them.

4\. _handcuffs_

Shinji wakes up tied to his bed.

"We need to talk," Hiyori says. Shinji immediately senses this conversation isn't going anywhere good.

"Why am I tied to my bed?" Best to get the obvious question out of the way first, he figures.

"So you can't run away," Hiyori says, flatly, in a voice that makes Shinji wish he hadn't already gone to the bathroom a few hours ago so he could piss his pants properly now. "We need to get a few things straight, while we got the chance."

"I can think of a few things that this isn't going to get anything close to straight," retorts Shinji, looking at the peeling paint on the walls and tugging against the restraints keeping him tight against the bed.

Hiyori growls, low in the back of her throat, and Shinji realizes, somewhat chillingly, that she's tied him to the bed with kido. "Maybe you didn't hear me the _first_ time," she says, clambering onto the bed and straddling his leg, eyes narrow and dangerous. "We're. Not. Shinigami anymore. Horaki Shinji-_san_."

"I don't know what you're talking abo-" Shinji starts, and then can't finish, because oh _fuck_, she's _kissing_ him, isn't she. "What," he says, stunned deadpan, when he can breathe again.

Hiyori doesn't have the decency or shame to look embarrassed, just that same angry stare she's had as long as he's known her. "We're not bound by rules or etiquette or fucking - _moral standards_ \- and we know that already, so stop acting like you don't know, it ain't fucking _funny_."

Shinji stares at her like she's grown an extra head (she hasn't, right? that's just his eyes crossing, right?) and then collapses against the bed with a long-ass sigh. "This ain't gonna change anything," he says, slowly. "And you ain't exactly the poster girl for girlfriend material."

Which gets him a kick in the balls, so, kind of a net loss there, which was not what he was going for. "I don't fucking want to be your _girlfriend_," she sneers, leaning over him. "I'm just tired of you pretending you and me and everyone else don't know what's already _mine_."

"What, my dignity ain't enough, you want my ass too?" Shinji rolls his eyes.

"_Yes_," Hiyori says, halfway to a growl, and bends down over him.

5._you won't know_

"Don't die," she says to him, just before they break through the barrier between them and the fake Karakura Town Soul Society's built for their little pow-wow, "or I'll sodomize your corpse with a chainsaw."

"You always know just what to say," he says, and waggles his eyebrow.

And then they're through.


End file.
